A New Twist on “Peak Oil”

In mid-2000, the world feared it was running out of oil. Speculators, in turn, became feverishly bullish on oil’s price. A 78% crash soon followed. Now, the phrase “peak oil” has been re-introduced, but in a different way.

37 Comments on "A New Twist on “Peak Oil”"

MASTERMIND on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:05 am

Just wait till the massive oil shortages hit in a few years! The Peak Oil Pig will be back! Like a phoenix rising from the ashes!

AM on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:22 am

@mast how many times I told you not to make this stupid prediction. I was a Paultard and I lost my shorts in gold. Are you about to lose all your shekles in oil?

What happened to Ron Paul and his tards? They’re still yapping on an on about precious metals.

They’re just useless babbling tards like you. If you lose money in the game it’s a kick in the nuts.

Don’t believe in anything the tards have to say.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:42 am

The video only takes the financial side in consideration. Zero reference to “Paris”, the real reason why Shell thinks that peak oil (demand) is immanent: oil is making itself impossible with rapidly incoming doom stories, correct or exaggerated, about climate developments. Ben van Beurden doesn’t know how quickly he can jump in his new e-vehicle to show the world that he understands the problem and that he is busy building wind parks in the North Sea.

Oil will peak soon… because it will become globally despised, like crack or plutonium. It’s seen as contaminated merchandise.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:44 am

Just wait till the massive oil shortages hit in a few years! The Peak Oil Pig will be back! Like a phoenix rising from the ashes!

“the phrase “peak oil” has been re-introduced, but in a different way”

Same with “laundromat” … it’s not just for phrases like “peak oil” anymore, it is also for washing the money of the richest man in the world who’s money, even though “clean”, is seized-up in the West (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan – 9).

Darrell Cloud on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:46 am

The volatility in price at the pump is amazing in my little county. Prices go up as much as 12 cents on the gallon in one night only to drop back down again bit by bit. It’s a straight shot up and a staircase down. There is no true sense as to where this market is going because there is no true market. On one side you have the finite limits of proven reserves at given price ranges. On the other side, you have the infinite supply of conjured money. We are running ninety to nothing with our eyes closed. There is a wall out there, but I only have a guess as to when we are going to hit it.

Possibly, but in america I hear the shale wells decline by like 90% within a couple of years. Only drilling thousands upon thousands of well rapidly can keep the illusion of increased production.

Suppose you fracked as much as america, which not all places have as much in resources, within a few years all that production would drop to a trickle. You only bought yourself a few more years.

I hear the american shale boom was financed by taking lots of debt, if the world is hit with peak global production the economy will crash and their won’t be a way to finance extraordinary and probably unprofitable ventures into massive unconventional production.

onlooker on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 10:34 am

“If they can frack America, they can frack the entire planet.” Wrong. The US had some distinct advantages over almost any country. They had the experience and expertise acquired over decades upon decades. But even more so they had unlimited funding based on the endless money printing going on in the Fed. The financial system backed by the Petrodollar. They were at the right place at the right time. Canada to a lesser extent. And of course not all places are blessed with the right deposits of oil and gas. If one doubts this just look at Venezuela with supposedly among the largest deposits of tar sands and look at them now.

pointer on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:21 am

This video is utterly useless.

Plantagenet on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:22 am

The US was also lucky in that it was led by Obama when the explosion in oil shale production occurred, and he was able to co-opt and divert the left so that there was almost no environmental opposition to massive fracking in the USA.

Cheers!

Apneaman on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:55 am

Plant drool, if a lump of shit sat in the white house for those 8 years, nothing would have been different. There was plenty of vocal opposition from envirotards, it was just ineffective as per usual and as it always will be. The only idiots who think environmentalists are a threat are brain washed hysterical & alarmist merican conservatards who can’t read data. Environmentalism has been the biggest failure of any movement to ever exist, but it’s the go to emotional button to rile up the useful idiot conservatard tribal monkeys.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:59 am

Wrong. The US had some distinct advantages over almost any country. They had the experience and expertise acquired over decades upon decades. But even more so they had unlimited funding based on the endless money printing going on in the Fed. The financial system backed by the Petrodollar. They were at the right place at the right time. Canada to a lesser extent. And of course not all places are blessed with the right deposits of oil and gas. If one doubts this just look at Venezuela with supposedly among the largest deposits of tar sands and look at them now.

Disagree. First of all, it is not true that only Americans are able to apply fracking. In my own country, the NAM has applied fracking on a small scale in 175 fields in the Netherlands:

Also it is not true that Europe doesn’t have the financial means to get fracking started if no oil could be acquired from other sources. The only reason why most Europeans countries do not go down the path of fracking is because of their fundamental choice for renewable energy, not because they can’t or don’t have the money.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 12:09 pm

I was surprised to learn that fracking originates from the 19th century:

Not going to happen. What we will see is that the climate change narrative will push itself ever more to the forefront of the public debate and that fossil fuel will get out of fashion. It is not hip. It is associated with the planet becoming one giant desert, rightly or wrongly. E-vehicles will become status symbols, a la look at me “saving the planet”.

Fossil fuel has an image problem.

GregT on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 12:34 pm

“Fossil fuel has an image problem.”

So why then, do we continue to burn more oil, coal, and natural gas, with each and every passing year?

GregT on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 12:44 pm

“It is associated with the planet becoming one giant desert, rightly or wrongly.”

Interesting take. From my understanding, most wrongly associate it mainly with sea level rise by the end of this century, and are completely ignorant of ocean acidification, climatic instability, and the sixth global mass extinction event that is currently already well underway.

MASTERMIND on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 1:17 pm

onlooker

You nailed it. But I would ad the US also had our dishonest MSM to promote unprofitable fracking to lure investors in.

shortonoil on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 1:22 pm

“If they can frack America, they can frack the entire planet.”

It requires 3 to 5 barrels of conventional crude to refine 1 barrel of LTO. It can not be put through a refinery by itself. Frac away, you can use it to start your burn barrel.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 1:55 pm

So why then, do we continue to burn more oil, coal, and natural gas, with each and every passing year?

Not really, not the US since 2006 and certainly not Europe, that has declining CHG since 1990:

If a solution will be forthcoming, it will come from Europe and to a lesser extent America. The image of fossil fuel in Europe is broken beyond repair. In the US there is currently a revival of that image, that probably will be short-lived.

MASTERMIND on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 2:05 pm

It also takes 2500 shale oil wells to produce one million barrels of oil. Compared to just 60 Iraqi conventional oil wells to do the same thing.

peakyeast on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 2:55 pm

@MASTER: Don’t forget the time factor on shale wells. If you take that into account the comparison gets extreme.

rockman on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 3:12 pm

“It requires 3 to 5 barrels of conventional crude to refine 1 barrel of LTO.” As explained many times in great DOCUMENTED certain no oil is used in the refinery process. The primary energy used is NG and to a much smaller extent electricity.

Also light oil is critical to the refining industry. It is required to blend with the heavy oils to bring the gravity to the 32° API required by the refineries. In fact, prior to the shale boom, the refineries had to also import large volumes of light oil to make those blends.

And as we should all know by know Canada would not be able to export the oil sands production if it didn’t import 350,000 bbls per day of US light oil/condensate to make the dilbit so they can pipeline it. And when when oil the Alberta production reaches the. US is has the be blended with more light oil/condensate since dilbit: dilbit is only 23° API.

Darian – The vast majority of the volume of shale around the world is not suitable for horizontal drilling and frac’ng. In fact the same is true for the US. Which is why 85%+ of oil produced from US shales comes from only 3 formations. That’s compared to many dozens of US shale formations that has been tested.

Another hurdle is that the vast majority of horizontal drilling and frac’ng equipment is in the US. Consider the much touted Vaca Muerta Shale in Argentina: in June there were a total of 60 rigs drilling in that country compared to 958 at the same time in the US. Hell, the total rig count for the rest of the world was only 960 that month.

And the disparity in frac’ng equipment globally compared to the US is huge.

Antius on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 3:17 pm

“In other words, peak oil supply: exit stage left.”

Supply is a function of price. The more people are prepared or able to pay, the greater the supply. Peak oil is predicated on the assumption that there is a limit to what the average consumer is able to pay for an average barrel and still make money from its use. At a price of $200/barrel we could make oil from water and limestone. But who could afford to buy it?

Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 3:46 pm

Onlooker, you’re so clueless. The economic advantages you’re talking about, and especially an entrepreneurial spirit and (relatively speaking) hands off government let America be first.

But the idea that there isn’t enough money to invest in such technology where fracking looks promising, by rich oil companies, just because it might be in “poor” countries is absurd.

In Europe, as Cloggie mentioned, it’s attitude and regulation — not finances, that have held back fracking there.

If and when the global resources need to be fracked due to demand for oil, they can be.

Whether they will need to be given the oncoming green revolution, remains to be seen.

Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 3:50 pm

Lots of people in the first world could buy oil at $200 a barrel, Antius. Looks what goes on in Europe, given the taxes, every day.

Despite all the whining, the vast majority of Americans were doing fine in the summer of 2008. They didn’t LIKE paying $4+ for gasoline — but they could.

But the thing is, they won’t pay more than the market demands. Hopefully the green revolution will prevent any sustained oil prices above $100 in coming decades.

onlooker on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 4:01 pm

I am clueless? Name one country that can just print money limitlessly like the US. And it is called the Petrodollar, for a reason. The entire planet has been in the dollar recycling business and US has been thus lent enormous amounts of money via US treasury bonds etc. And so the US Debt keeps growing and the world yawns. And you are going to tell me that other countries can match that financial stream? Now who is clueless. The fracking/shale has been financially hemorrhaging from day one, it is NOT a profitable endeavor. That is why other countries chose to stay away from it.

boat on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 5:03 pm

onlooker,

Many countries print there own money. Some provide more value than others. You worry about US frackers? Or are you worried about the banks that take the risk. Or are you worried about investors that buy bonds. Why would care who loses or wins the risk game.
Venezuela along with other countries chose to spend on their populations instead of oil. What happened?

onlooker on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 5:09 pm

Outcast, in Europe they can pay so much for Oil because their economies are relatively strong and their taxes subsidize social services like education and healthcare. In the US not so much. Or are you not seeing the tremendous economic drain that healthcare has become to small and large players in the US economy.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 6:16 pm

“Peak Oil” is defined by the financial system and the ability to make a profit. A government may be able to recover and refine oil at a loss because they have the taxpayer to pay for it, but it will not be available to that same taxpayer. It will be used by the government, elite and military exclusively. The day is fast approaching when food, clothing and shelter are top priority for the serfs, not the burning of FF. Wait and see.

Apneaman on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 6:30 pm

Outcast_Searcher, what about the 2008-09 bailing out of banks and financial institutions? Pretty fucking “hands on” there. How many times has the US government been hands on when it’s bail out time? I thought letting companies sink or swim on their own was the corner stone of capitalism?

The only thing that is a bigger fucking joke than capitalism is capitalism’s fanboys and their cherry picking and selective memory.

Privatize the profits and socialize the costs – that’s the way it really works. The fanboys like yourself seem to be addicted to sucking on that big propaganda cock and swallowing the goo it spews. If capitalism was as dog eat dog as the swinging dicks like to pretend, 3/4 of today’s corporations would have been dead and buried long ago.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 6:36 pm

The U$ is printing its way to Zimbabwe by way of the Weimer Republic. Soon the USD will be nothing more than paper. And the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, etc are hurrying that process along. Then, $1,000,000 will not buy a loaf of bread. (SDRs anyone?) lol

onlooker on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 6:43 pm

You said it AP is your uniquely coarse way haha. The Capitalism fanboys don’t seem to get it through their thick skulls, that Capitalism is crooks and scheming and fixing and bribing and covert black ops to make sure we have had “friendly” govts and compliant friends. Your pristine Capitalism is about as dirty and fixed a game as has ever existed. Problem is Capitalism and its stewards thought they could cheat and exploit the Earth, me thinks not.

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:23 pm

Here is a winning Canadian company the board Candads can be proud of:
“KRAYDEN: Latest Bombardier bailout ignores Canada’s new reality”http://tinyurl.com/ycm3m53s